Pre-Postmodernist Fiction
Not by mere chance has this novel recently been plucked from obscurity to become the focus of intense interest among academics. Wrongly dismissed as being too heavily influenced by more popular works with a similar theme published before—but actually written after—it, DeMille’s work became another example of a 19th century novel needing to wait until 20th century sensibilities caught up with it. The structure of the framing device in which the manuscript is discovered long after it was written allows the characters in the contemporary setting to comment upon the mysterious manuscript and its fantastical contents in such a playful manner that it is all but certain the author did it intentionally. He had no way of knowing he was writing a postmodern novel because, of course, such a thing was still a century away from developing.
Things aren’t Always What they Seem
The manuscript is the story of a strange secret civilization hidden beneath the Antarctic that serves as a satirical inversion of everything about Victorian Era western civilization. To those reading the manuscript in the story’s present-day, the Kosekin civilization is upside down and in its unfamiliarity at first almost ridiculous: status is awarded to the poor while wealth is a thing to be avoided, surrender in defeat is considered more honorable than victory in war and prisoners live lavish lifestyles. What seems at first to be a way of life not just unfamiliar, but profoundly misguided and wrong is gradually revealed to have merit and provide benefits almost unknown in any civilizations on the planet. The rejection of wealth spurs acts of sacrifice and charity. The dishonor of conquest reduces the incidence of war. At the same time, however, the people practice sacrificial acts of ritual cannibalism and reject the notion of requited love as the basis for family.
Hollow Earth Theory
One of the themes which the novel tangentially explores is a scientific concept that was gaining quite a bit of traction in the 19th century, though utilized most effectively by a rising wave of imaginative adventure fiction writers like Jules Verne and two Edgars: Allen Poe and Rice Burroughs. A soldier from Ohio named John Symmes was almost single-handedly responsible for bringing the theory somewhat into the mainstream in the first half of the 1800’s. The attraction of the idea was simple: if the earth were hollow, then unknown civilizations might be existing literally beneath our feet without our ever realizing it. DeMille seems to have been attracted to the theory less on any scientific basis than as another possibility for adding layers of ironic and satirical self-reflection to the twin-narrative construction of his novel. After all, his narrator admits of the theories: “These, I knew, were only the creations of fiction; yet, after all, it seemed possible that the earth might contain vast hollow spaces in its interior.”
